 Good afternoon Mark Redmond executive director of Spectrum. Thank you so much for joining us today. You must thank Lauren Glenn It's great to be with you as always. So are you all working remotely or what's happening a spectrum open for business? So we're open for business. It's interesting You know, everybody knows this for our work with homeless youth and we'll talk about that But we probably work with 20 times more youth and families who are not homeless But who are struggling with either these are kids who are in the foster care system or leaving the foster care system Suffer from addiction or mental health issues So we have staff working in schools in the community counseling all over. So they're all remote, you know I've ordered everyone out of our building and Everybody's laptop and they have a zoom account and they're able to do Tele-therapy that way and work with children and families that way. So I'm really happy. We pretty Moved into action pretty quickly. Now that being said, right? We have a drop-in center that's open every day We're young people many of whom are homeless come and get a free hot lunch free hot dinner Take a shower do their laundry, you know use the computers and Unfortunately as of yesterday, we had to we just it was just too risky, you know So now our staff are giving kids if they come there at noon or at 5 p.m We're giving them meals, you know that they can eat out the door. So and then as you know, we have 16 homeless youth living in our building in Pearl Street. Oh And Bishop coin lets us use St. Joseph co-cathedral parish Hall every winter So I have about seven more kids in there. So, you know, those staff can't work remotely, right? Right gotta be in there with those kids. So those of the staff who to me are really heroic They're like first responders in a way, right? Yeah, and they're in there and they're helping those kids and I really admire Unfortunately, none of them our staff have gotten sick, which is good But we're putting a list together a volunteer list of people But we can call upon and I'm one of them who to fill in if we really get desperate So you've had to make some real contingency plans. Did you feel your organization was up to Able to make these decisions quickly and execute them. How did you feel organizationally? This is working So it's so interesting. I mean, we have a safety committee that meets monthly anyway about all kinds of safety issues And then once this virus said we kind of morphed into that and it's amazing how rapidly I think it was only two Mondays ago I was saying to people what do you think should we tell people to work from home and everybody was like, no We're not there yet and we met maybe three days later and we were there, you know If this has happened so rapidly, right the NBA got canceled March Man this guy one thing after the other and that's when we began to realize Wow so luckily we have a really talented team of people and Everybody put contingency plans in place pretty quickly, you know, so I was that's even we're small, right? We had about 60 employees Howard center's got over a thousand so, you know We were able to really mobilize pretty quickly and get things in place for our our staff and our kids, which was good And you mentioned Howard center you work in partnership with a lot of organizations. How has that? Response been your ability to leverage collective resources. So that's a good question once we saw This thing coming at us. I'm very tied with Rita Markley and Trisha Coates is the acting director at Lund, right? Then you have a new place which one's the warming shelters So we started communicating first by phone call and then we have now we have an every other day Zoom session and it's expanded so it's still Cots and Lund and Howard center and United Way and Cito Mike Monney from Champlain Housing Trust is part of that somebody from the state is part of that somebody from the hospital So quickly we're mobilizing more and more people and really now here's the thing. We're really working on Lauren's one This is what scares me. What if one of the young people staying with us shows symptoms, right and We send them to the primary care provider, which is community health center and they say oops This person needs to go up to the hospital and then they've seen at the hospital But the hospital either doesn't have room or the person isn't isn't in that range of who they're looking to really keep, right? And they send them back to us. What do we do and Lund faces that a new place faces that Cots but we all face that so I've been saying to the state for the last 10 days And I'm we're helping them somebody's got to find a site Somewhere separate right where where people who don't have a home that they can be quarantined to can go So the state they're telling me by tomorrow They're supposed to let us know they're looking to look for five sites. They're calling them congregate now a regional recovery centers congregate regional Recovery centers where people can go and they're looking for one obviously for Chittenden County So one person has been calling the colleges I don't know if that's gonna fly because those kids aren't going back to those dorms anytime soon We're looking at any kind of abandoned building. I've called Bishop coin about the Immaculate Conception Cathedral You know, we're really pulling out all the stops because I believe that's what we need now We need us a building a site where people can go who don't have a home to go to on the fort up at the fort those buildings were all st. Michael's dormitories and They have they're sitting there. In fact, we were thinking of buying one about a year ago Respective we didn't follow through but I've been through those buildings. That would be another possible site So you're right So we've we've got a scramble and I have to give the state high marks for their ability to really move quickly We've got to find a site because I that is my biggest fear and I'll tell you I think cots in a new place Are even more of a bind because their population is a lot older older than 60 People whose immune systems are already compromised people who've been smokers. That's the target group That's the group that's most likely to get this virus in a way unfortunate. We deal with 18 19 20 year olds They could get it, but they're less likely to get it So the markets in the really have taken a hit and it makes me think about fundraising And what kind of response you've had and do you think there'll be a? Short-term bump and then a long term. Oh my gosh, none of us have any money to give Yeah, we're really concerned, you know spectrum now. This is my 17th year When I got there the first year we raised $49,000 in donations last year We raised $2 million in donations and this year we have to raise 2.1 And a big part of that is the sleepout. We were supposed to do this sleep out Next Thursday night that usually raises over $300,000. We can't do sleep out this year We can't have 100 people in the basement of the uu church and 100 people sleeping out in that lawn So we've told people do it remotely so I'm going to do it in my backyard Everybody's going to do it in the back row. We're going to put up a live feed on facebook You know, so and then there's the kids ones. We have hundreds of kids doing them They can't do it either. So Hopefully people will still be able to do it. I don't know if it's going to raise and that but you raise a good question, right? How much, you know, well looks like we're sliding it into recession And you know, are people going to have the funds to Give to us. I think we have a very good Case to make that now is when we need to be stand with homeless kids more than ever, right? They were always behind the eight ball with great obstacles in front of them Now more than ever we need spectrum in our supporters. So We'll see how that hands out, you know, but a lot of nonprofits are in the same the world in the same bucket Are you getting enough rest yourself? I am I woke up at 3 a.m. This morning for some reason And I did some work and then I went back to sleep So I feel pretty I I feel really good You know, I love to go to the gym and go to spinning classes and swim So I'm really missing the edge right now But it's starting to warm up and we can all exercise outdoors, right? We can do that So, yeah, so I you know my wife Mary Beth is in the legislature as you know I know you've interviewed her and she's been on your your studio So she is of course they gave them off. Well off this week. She's on a call right now I mean just because they're off she and the rest of the legislators are really working Time on this thing this thing and she's on the human services committee. So this is hitting them straight, you know But we're trying to relax as much as we can our son is relaxing. He doesn't have school He's doing okay So do you watch netflix or prime? Yeah, I love netflix any recommendations. Well, I wondered what the last thing you saw was Oh My gosh, what do we watch we watched last night? We have a long list of things we want to watch right so we watched last night amazing grace Which is a documentary about a wreath of franklin, right? It was a proxy and now it's on hulu. So we watched that that's such a beautiful. It was a 1972 concert she did and uh, Sydney Pollock was the he recorded it and it's it's we're about halfway through it And uh, we saw motherless brooklyn the night before that which edward norton. It was a great movie I love that But you work people on facebook are all like name you I wrote down like 20 different series killing eve the outside I'm writing them all down Yeah, you got to because you got to put them in the watch list. That's it. I give that watch lip up the date Well, I'm glad you have some time to relax and thanks for your time now and all the work that you've done Leading the community as a coalition builder and a public servant. I mean really Thank you. Thank you. Well, thank you for what you're doing Communication and what you're doing is what's going to get us through all this We all work together and you're a piece of that too and I'm grateful to you in your studio So thanks for having me on today. I appreciate I'll look for it. Okay. All right mark redmond. Thank you